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What, exactly, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? In the second presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the time since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has asserted even more of that control for himself, authorizing strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse seems to have mostly been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, much of the power to appropriate government money has also shifted to the executive, with the administration asserting the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and attempting to redirect the funds to other uses. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can bypass the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the federal government simply ceases operations. That is, large sections of the administration shut down – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. Currently, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of the House and Senate can appear rather moot. Why should U.S. citizens care who has a controlling share in a institution that has mostly abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric could help California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Prop 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a upcoming vote in the coming weeks, has seized the political imagination of liberals across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends happening in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as California, New York and the Evergreen State draw their district lines via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The California measure is clearly designed as a response to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in the Lone Star State, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five positions in the state’s congressional delegation in the upcoming term; comparable redistricting moves are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and the Hoosier State. (The left in Virginia are also emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to pass, as progressive voters respond with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of power and seek ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some opponents warn that the move could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their districts so as to eliminate any chance of opposition party success. Different critics have critiqued the proposal on strictly principled democratic grounds: a electoral area that is created in such a manner that the outcome of the vote is never really in doubt, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be genuinely representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is supposed to define a healthy democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it happens at all.

It is valuable taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to alter their own districts in retaliation, does not hold up as a logical point: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The Republican party, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of retaliation to redraw boundaries that secure long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.

The other critique, in my view, is more significant, reflecting not just a strategic difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic shift, but a kind of sad desire for a distinct country than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal world – in the world that most the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored population groups; it is not good for elected officials to choose their voters, instead of the reverse; it is negative that elections are rendered noncompetitive. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the autocratic creep of Trump’s power and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a indication of how much we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.

If Congress fails to in reality have lawmaking, military or budgetary authority, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s additional five blue house members will be dispatched to the capital to do? One thing that the House and Senate continues to retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to significant impact. In 2027, if the measure is approved and the state’s additional Democrats are take office, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate the president, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel associates of his close advisors to give evidence. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet columnist